IQNA

TEHRAN (IQNA) – United Nations officials struggling to mobilize aid for more than half a million Rohingya Muslims who fled violence in Myanmar in recent weeks have reported another surge of arrivals in Bangladesh, and warned on Tuesday that the crisis could worsen.

More than 11,000 people crossed the border into Bangladesh
on Monday, the United Nations refugee agency said, and thousands more are
waiting to cross.

More than 515,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since
Aug. 25, when Myanmar’s army responded to attacks by militants in the western
state of Rakhine by burning whole villages in a campaign that the United
Nations has called ethnic cleansing.

The number of people crossing the border had slowed to
around 2,000 a day in the past week. But Adrian Edwards, a spokesman for the
refugee agency, told journalists in Geneva on Tuesday, "We’re back in a
situation of full alert as far as influxes are concerned.”

"It’s still a situation that has potential to worsen,” he
added.

The surge in arrivals coincided with reports from local
residents of renewed gunfire in northern Rakhine State, the refugee agency
said, but that area of Myanmar is off limits to humanitarian agencies and
journalists, and aid workers did not say what had caused the latest influx.

Desperate to escape Myanmar, many refugees have crowded onto
rickety fishing vessels to cross the Naf River into Bangladesh. At least 14
people, most of them children, died when a boat sank off the coast of
Bangladesh on Sunday, Mr. Edwards said.

Many of the latest arrivals to Bangladesh had walked for 12
to 14 days to reach the border, Mr. Edwards said, and included people suffering
from illness, injuries and trauma resulting from extreme violence.

International relief agencies are scrambling to meet the
needs for shelter, water and medical care for refugees in overcrowded and
unsanitary conditions, raising fears of a major disease outbreak.

On Tuesday, United Nations agencies and the Bangladeshi
health authorities began a campaign to vaccinate refugees against cholera — the
second-largest operation of its kind, surpassed only by the emergency
vaccination program carried out in Haiti last year, the New York Times reported.

The World Health Organization said that more than 10,000
cases of diarrhea had been reported in refugee camps and settlements close to
the Bangladeshi border with Myanmar, and warned of the potential for a cholera
epidemic.

The agency’s unit coordinating relief for the refugees said
that around 14,500 children had been treated for severe malnutrition, which
leaves them particularly vulnerable to cholera, although an agency spokesman,
Christian Lindmeier, confirmed that no cases of cholera had been confirmed.

The program aims to provide oral vaccines to 650,000 people
this month, plus a second dose to a quarter of a million children aged 1 to 5
starting at the end of October.

For the longer term, Bangladesh announced last week that it
was setting aside land to bring refugees now scattered in numerous small
settlements into one location. The resulting site, if completed, would be one
of the world’s largest refugee camps, accommodating around 800,000 Rohingya
Muslims.